Climate Smart Agriculture Investment Plans: Bringing CSA to Life

Climate change continues to make headlines, as its impacts are felt by people and the planet in unprecedented ways. Farmers aren’t spared, as more frequent extreme weather events affect productivity of crops and livestock, and drive down incomes. As climate change intensifies, the food system will continue to be among the sectors that is the most vulnerable. Agriculture is also a major part of the climate problem, generating 19-29% of total GHG emissions.

More and more countries are seeing climate-smart agriculture (CSA) as a solution.  CSA is an integrated approach to managing landscapes that boosts productivity, enhances resilience and reduces greenhouse gas emissions. As one of the biggest financiers of agriculture, the World Bank works with countries in their efforts to scale up climate-smart agriculture.

Since 2014, the World Bank and partners have released 30 ‘Climate Smart Agriculture Profiles’, which have helped countries across Asia, Africa and Latin America understand the climate challenges their food systems face, discover possible solutions to their problems, and assess how climate-smart their agriculture sectors already are.

The Bank is now building on the CSA profiles and looking at the next phase: bringing CSA to life at the country level with the ‘Climate Smart Agriculture Investment Plans’, developed in cooperation with a wide range of partners including the Adaptation for African Agriculture (AAA) Initiative, the International Center for Tropical Agriculture (CIAT) and the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA). WB is very grateful to financial support from the UK Department of International Development (DFID), Agence Francaise de Developpement (AFD) and the NDC Partnership.

The CSA Investment Plans identify concrete actions governments can take to boost climate-smart agriculture, both in the form of investment opportunities and policy design and implementation. Countries can also use the CSAIPs to inform their NDC updates and National Agriculture Investment Plans.  They also inform government, development partners and the private sector about promising climate-smart agriculture technologies, as well as associated costs.  In Zambia for example, the CSAIP recommends focusing on crop diversification, commercial horticulture, agroforestry, and infrastructure to reduce post-harvest losses.

CSAIPs are already achieving impact:

Investments: The Bank is committed to financing over US$ 2.5 billion in projects aligned with CSAIP objectives. Examples include:

• In Bangladesh, the Government and the World Bank have partnered to invest US$ 500 million in the Livestock and Dairy Development Project LDDP project, developed in parallel with the CSAIP for Bangladesh.
• In Lesotho, the CSAIP informed the design of the $50 million second phase of the Smallholder Agricultural Development Project (SADP 2), by highlighting the sector’s major climate change challenges and possible solution pathways, in particular related to the likely impacts of climate change on agricultural trade and comparative advantage across key commodities as well as key climate-resilient practices.

Policies: CSAIPs take national development strategies as starting points and flexibly tailor their approach to feed into ongoing strategy processes owned by each country. Examples include:

•  In Bangladesh, CSAIP results are being integrated into Delta Plan 2100 and informing the new National Agriculture Strategy currently under formulation.
• In Zambia and Zimbabwe, CSAIPs are informing the formulation of the CAADP National Agriculture Investment Plans.

Scaling Up: The African Agriculture Initiative (AAA) is using CSAIPs as its principal tool to identify AAA-member countries’ adaptation priorities in the agriculture sector. At its second Ministerial Meeting in November 2019, attended by 20 ministers of agriculture from across Africa, it was decided to scale-up CSAIP development across Africa through the application of GCF readiness funding.

CSAIP Series coverage:

CSAIPs are available for Bangladesh, Côte d’Ivoire, Mali, Zambia;  

CSAIPs for Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Congo-Brazzaville, Ghana, Iraq, Lesotho, Namibia, Nepal and Zimbabwe are currently being developed.